Beautiful, Lily and James
by searching.for.an.absolute
Summary: Lily and James are thrown together into a dark time as voldemort approaches in their 7th year; with their lives in danger and crazed hormones, will they find something beautiful? Story on indefinite hiatus :
1. Chapter 1

**HERE GOES MY LILYXJAMES STORY!!**

**This story is planned out to be a multichap story, and it's going to be following Lily and James through their seventh year to their wedding. **

**Basically, Lily Evans is a classic sweet good girl. She's pretty but she's not beautiful...She's kind and she's got friends, but she's not insanely popular (think realistic, not Mary Sue Lily). James Potter on the other hand, really did bug Lily about going out together just to...bug her. And to draw attention to himself. He's fantastically popular and good-looking and definitely DID NOT pine over Lily for lots and lots of years. He's had lots of girlfriends and he's smart, but he's got flaws just like any other human being. Over one summer, James is forced to grow up by the murders of many of his family members. He and his parents and a few distant cousins are suddenly the only Potters left, and James realizes the dark forces alive in the Wizarding World. Determined to go back to school, focus his skills in DADA and join the Order of the Phoenix to fight, he has suddenly forgotten all about Lily and his social status. After all, Lily meant little more to him than just a distant acquaintance he bothered a lot. But when one dark, stormy night James is forced back inside the Heads Quarters from Qudditch practice and finds Lily and her boyfriend Thomas making out heatedly on the couch, he realizes that perhaps his feelings for Lily are not quite so simple. Their relationship is complicated further when Lily's father is murdered by the same dark Lord Voldemort that murdered James's family, and Dumbledore insists that Lily and James live under absolute secrecy over Christmas break, bound to their quarters and hidden behind layers of magical security. With their lives in danger, their families hanging in the balance, crazed teenage hormones and only each other to depend on, Lily and James may find something more powerful than every other force in existence; love.**

**Oh, and meanwhile, Sirius may just find love with Lily's friend Kathleen Turner, his polar opposite who seems immune to even his perfect floppy hair. **

**AN: Yes, I know that the imaginary HEAD QUARTERS do not exist in Hogwarts. Pretend that they existed in Lily and James's time. **

**Disclaimer: No, I do not own Harry Potter. Do I seem like I have several million dollars? No. Do I look like Jo? No. Do I have any talent remotely close to JKR? No. Is this official Harry Potter? No. Thanks, captain obvious!**

**READ. REVIEW. OR LILY WILL HEX YOU INTO THE NEXT CENTURY. and if you do, there are virtual chocolate chip cookies.**

Beautiful, a harry potter fanfic Lily and James

Lily Evans was a legendary girl in the magic halls of Hogwarts, and sometimes she resented it. She was a good student. She had good friends and she was kind, she helped others and she loved life. She had never been popular, but she didn't want to be. These things made her a good person, hardly a legendary one…

Unfortunately, what made her legendary were her rather flamboyant rejections of the one and only James Potter, Marauder extraordinaire and Lily's "number one fan".

The entire population of Hogwarts, students and teachers both, knew better than to get in Lily's way when she wanted to annihilate James. Now, they had come to anticipate it as a kind of entertainment. It was amusing, entertaining—unless you tried to intervene. Only the bravest souls at Hogwarts would bother trying to stop the duo. These brave souls had included Lily's best friend Alice, James's best friend Sirius, and a very bemused Professor Dumbledore on a memorable last day of school, two months ago, when Lily had screeched across the Great Hall that she would rather date a Slytherin than Potter.

Now, as Lily neared the school on the Hogwarts Express for the last time, she had to wonder if maybe she had been a little harsh. Lily was, in most cases, the person who liked to avoid confrontation as much as possible. She was shy and even-tempered…most of the time. 'Course, she _was _a redhead, and she _had _inherited the infamous Celtic redhead temper. Only after years and years of training had she managed to hold her temper in check. And somehow, James Potter _always _managed to break her hold.

Maybe it was that wind-mussed hair of his. It drove her crazy, the way it'd never lay flat. It really bothered her. What was worse was that, somewhere in the back of her spacious mind, she knew that sometimes she wanted to run her fingers through it, just to feel it. It looked _so _soft, like silk…her thoughts started to shift from reality to a dreamy, faded zone where she thought things about James Potter that she probably shouldn't…

_Snap out of it. _She reprimanded herself and went back to considering _why _James…wait, wait…_Potter _always managed to slip under her skin.

Maybe it was those mesmerizing hazel eyes of his. She picked such a plain word, 'hazel', to call his eye colour because she didn't know of a single colour stunning enough to describe it. A pool of deep brown-gold, with 

emerald green and sapphire blue specks radiating from the centre…they always managed to distract her a little in the middle of her tirades about why she would never date him.

Maybe…maybe it was the fact that he smelled too good for his own good—she certainly didn't find it shocking that she was not the only girl who reeled at a waft of his scent. Only difference was that she never let him know it.

He was also too good-looking for his own stupid good. _He _seemed to have been blessed by God with Adonis-like features, charismatic characteristics…Jeez, the list could go on for a while. _Why _was he so goddamned good-looking, or as his little groupie club called him, god-worthy?

And then there were his annoyingly smart qualities, like the fact that he could ace Transfiguration when she was struggling, like the fact that he'd managed to fly a broom before her…like the fact that sometimes it felt like he could see right through her.

Lily inhaled and then sighed deeply, wondering when exactly she had started to like James Potter as a person.

She gulped at the thought. Maybe if she denied it a little longer…

"Lily Evans, sweetie!" a hand waved in front of her face. Lily jumped, turning to face the direction from which the hand was coming from. An impatient Alice Brandon stared back at her, blue eyes wide. "You're spacing out on me all the time. I think you need therapy."

Lily tried to laugh, although Alice probably wasn't too far from the truth, if _Lily _had started to admit she was too far in love with James Potter to be annoyed at him. "I'm fine, thanks."

"You have your Heads meeting, sweetheart. You know, it's only what you've been working towards your whole magical career?"

Lily rolled her eyes. "Jeez, you'd think I was elected Minister of Magic or something, the way you put it."

"Oh, I know this is the first step in your massive scheme for world domination," Alice replied, tone of voice matter-of-fact and eyes widely innocent.

Lily was halfway to a good retort when a head of gorgeous brown hair stuck itself into their train compartment. Lily said, rather loudly, "Gee, Alice. I wonder who that is…if it's Sirius Black, I might hex him into the next millennia just for being here…"

"Ah, Lily dear, you know you love me," Black said solemnly, the rest of him popping through the door into their compartment. Alice and Kathleen Turner, another one of Lily's few but very close friends, looked equally miffed. Where there was Sirius Black, there was bound to be James Potter, and where there was James Potter, there was bound to be an infuriated and annoyingly spaced-out Lily. Of course, neither Alice nor Kathleen knew exactly _why _Lily spaced out around James—they assumed, naturally, it was her plotting James's ultimate death, not that she was daydreaming about making out with the guy in a closet.

"And you know that you'd better keep your limbs away from me if you want to keep them," Lily replied, her voice breezy.

"I'm wounded," Sirius said, dramatically holding his hand to his heart. "And here I was, doing my good deed for the day, trying to tell Lily sweetheart to get her butt up to the Prefects meeting…"

"Oh, shut up," Kathleen suddenly said, her voice filled annoyance that hadn't been there two minutes ago. The quiet brunette shot daggers at Sirius with her eyes. "Lily knows what she's doing."

Sirius, who had probably never had a conversation with the smart, gentle girl who liked to listen and observe, suddenly took a look in her direction. Dramatizing again, he bowed before her and made a bouquet flourish from the tip of his wand. "And this lovely lady is…"

Kathleen pulled out her own wand—oh, how Lily envied them, they were _already _seventeen—and made the flowers wilt. Kathleen's hand moved in a lightning-fast, imperceptible movement, and immediately Sirius was wearing a sign that said "JERK" across his chest—and a sign that said something much less favourable across his back. Lily could not help her grin when Kathleen retorted, "If you spent less time acting like a rabbit in the broom cupboards, you'd know exactly who I was after seven years."

"Rabbits are rather adorable creatures, aren't they?" Sirius replied with what Lily guessed he thought was a 'charming' smile. He lazily moved his wand, making his signs say "SIRIUSLY GORGEOUS" and "SIRIUS SEX GOD".

Lily couldn't hold back her laugh this time. Kathleen glared at Sirius first—Lily wondered what was going on with Kathleen and Sirius. She hadn't known that Kathleen knew Sirius's brain was capable of conversation. Lily didn't have time to ponder it, though, when she had half a minute to get to the Prefects' meeting.

"I'll be back later, guys!" she called to the room in general. Alice didn't look up from the magazine she was reading and neither Sirius nor Kathleen tossed her a glance. They were too busy changing Sirius's signs, which by now where spattered with a multitude of paint and swear words.

Lily smiled to herself as she closed the door to the compartment.

Lily's red hair flew out behind her as she rushed from her compartment down the hallway to the Prefects' chamber, and she nearly tripped into it. She smiled at a few familiar faces and waved to Remus Lupin, the only half-sane member of the Marauders. He'd been a Prefect for two years now, and Lily would guess that he was Head Boy. She'd be perfectly fine with sharing the Heads Quarters with Remus—he was reserved and polite and wouldn't tread on her nerves like stupid James—Potter.

Not that Potter had a chance of being Head Boy. He was the leader of their dumb little gang and he had never been a Prefect, thank god. If she had to share the Heads Quarters with Potter…she would either kill him or kiss him, whichever came first, and neither would go down well. Killing him would make Professor Dumbledore kick her out of the school, and kissing him would sacrifice her personal dignity to a degree where she'd never show her face in public again.

He was annoying that way, Potter. He acted as if she was stupid and didn't know he asked her out all the time to mess with her, and to mess with the school. You only had to take a look at the girls he dated on the side of asking her out—girls, you'd notice, that didn't _mind _his constant asking her out, which totally meant that they knew Potter wasn't serious. He dated the most beautiful, most popular, most Beauxbatons-ish girls he could find. What irritated her was that most of the time he tended to date the smart ones that were actually kind of nice and stayed with them for months on end.

She had no clue why she'd landed as James Potter's favourite victim. God, she knew he didn't _like _her. He liked _bugging _her. Because she had a huge temper and it was probably amusing to him.

She couldn't really deny that when he had first started doing it, it had been kind of flattering. And then it'd had just gotten annoying. And then when he had started to just date other girls on the side of jokingly asking her out constantly, it had kind of hurt.

Who was she kidding? It'd killed. To know that he'd been messing with her since she had been fourteen. To realize that he didn't _really _like her, he 

just thought she was funny to make fun of. To know that he'd had something like a couple dozen girlfriends and she'd only had one boyfriend.

A boyfriend, she thought sadly, she hadn't seen all summer. She'd been looking forward to seeing Thomas again. Thomas Klein was smart and good-looking and nice. She was lucky to have him…only if she could _see _him right now.

Lily was knocked from her reverie by Remus's quiet "Say something!" She looked frantically in his direction, realizing that she was standing at the front of the train compartment whereas Remus was sitting in front of her. She looked at him in panic. "Why aren't you standing next to me? You're Head Boy, get up here, don't make me do it by myself," she hissed, realizing that the Prefects were all looking at her expectantly.

A couple of them snickered.

Somebody cleared their throat next to her. She realized, a little bit disconcerted, that somebody was already standing next to her. She turned her head just in time to feel her jaw drop at the sight of James Potter, robes on and Head Boy badge and all, opening his mouth to say, "Well, I guess, um, the Head Girl just needs some time to adjust. You people should all know what to do, I think, probably better than I do…if you want to ask why Dumbledore's nuts to make me Head Boy, you're all free to do it…"

The room snickered again. Lily felt her face flame and her head whip from the sight of Potter with the Head Boy badge to Remus, an amused smile at his lips, sitting in the front row.

Lily snapped her jaw closed, knowing she probably shouldn't cause a scene right now. What kind of crazy scheme were Potter and Remus pulling off, switching places? Not that Potter would even be able to switch places with Remus—Remus was a Prefect, if not Head Boy, and Potter was neither.

At least, she hoped…James looked a little baffled, a little proud, and a whole lot…different since the last time she'd seen him. He'd had windblown hair and singe marks on his robes and hands covered in black grime from setting off fireworks and a childish grin across his handsome features.

And now he was wearing formal black robes, hair still awry, a rather…mature expression on his face. It made him look…older. More devastatingly good-looking than ever.

Lily felt a strange thought pass through her. _What if Potter was really Head Boy? _

Her first emotion, although it shouldn't have been her first emotion, was an odd sense of celebration. She got to spend the whole frigging year with James frigging Potter.

And then her second emotion was a kind of washed-out hurt. He wouldn't care. He wouldn't talk to her if they were alone—there was nobody to witness his antics, nobody to laugh at their argument. He'd ignore her, and she'd probably end up having to field his girlfriends all over the place.

Lily thought that James turned to look at her oddly for a moment, but she didn't know. Lily sighed a little before she realized that James Potter was, shockingly, indeed Hogwarts' Head Boy this year. He wore the same red-and-gold badge as her, with his name emblazoned on the front. Lily could only stare.


	2. Chapter 2

**Second chap, peoples. :D **

**Hope you're liking it so far, I'm trying my best, I promise.**

**Thanks for reading! PLEASE review. all constructive criticism welcome. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. And I'm working on a more creative disclaimer. **

**AN: I'm SO sorry this has taken so long, I'm working on chap three as you read this. **

It was difficult, Lily decided, not to see the difference in James Potter after their short two months apart. Lily stood, listening, in the Prefects' compartment, trying to see the sense in James's transformation. She really shouldn't care, but she did anyways. He hadn't cracked a single joke, hadn't asked her out once--hadn't even really talked to her once. She had always known it was coming, this inevitable maturation and growing-up-thing. It had happened early to her, when she'd realized that no, her sister Petunia did not like her much anymore. Lily had always hoped that James would be somebody who could escape it, "it" being the dreaded growing-up phase.

But James stood before her, serious, responsible...still adorable. Lily brushed off her admiration of James's perfect facial features--she knew that every other girl in the room was appraising him the same way she was, and she did not have a claim to him. James finished saying something about the House Passwords and turned to her. "Did you want to say something, Lily?" he asked her, politely.

He never called her _Lily. _It was always Evans or Lilyflower or babe or something degrogatory. And she was definitely _happy _that he wasn't referring to her condescendingly, but she was definitely _not _happy about _why _he was doing it.

James Potter had grown up.

Shocked about this revelation, and rather stupefied by his talking to her, she could only nod at him before turning to the Prefects. "Well," she began, a little shakily, as she formed her words in her mind, "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts, everybody. Congratulations on becoming Prefects to the Fifth Years, and congratulations to you veterans for doing good enough a job that Dumbledore didn't kick you off. As Prefects, we are supposed to be the leaders at school, so I expect all of you to set good examples for the other students in both your personal and academic lives." She could almost roll her own eyes at her cheesy words, but they needed to be said. "So that means no taking advantage of Prefect Status to let your friends off," Lily shot James and Remus a meaningful look, "No excess PDA in the halls, blah, blah, blah, you know the drill." James seemed indifferent to her. Lily had always been expecting it, but never expecting the absence of his pestering--which she had always deemed to be annoying, despite his good looks, to effect her so deeply. "I'm very glad to be your Head Girl this year, and I promise I'll do my best to meet your expectations. If you have any questions or problems, feel free to talk to me." Lily offered them a half-hearted smile and shut up.

Since James had covered most of the stuff they'd been supposed to talk about--safety, House passwords, impartiality between Houses--ha, as if--and responsibilities, the Prefects began to file out of the compartment. Remus and James stayed behind, murmuring between themselves. Lily felt like she was intruding, so she turned back to break the horrific news that James Potter was Head Boy to her friends. Before she could open the door, though, James ran up behind her and said, "Lily, wait."

"What is it?" she asked him, being as polite as possible to him, since he seemed to doing her the same favour.

"I..." he faltered for a moment, and she tried hard not to notice how good he smelled. This was his effect on every member of the female species, and she was the only one who knew how obnoxious, arrogant, irritating...annoyingly smart and funny he was. "Listen, I'm sorry about all the crap I put you through these last two years."

Lily did not exactly have an answer to this. What was she supposed to say? _Hell, you should be sorry. _Or her personal favourite, _No, don't stop it, if you do, you'll stop talking to me. _She didn't even _like _him that way. She _had _a boyfriend, thank you very much. She only nodded.

"Er..." he ran a hand through his hair--at least that much hadn't changed about him. "I'm just, you know, sorry for bugging you and everything. It was embarrassing and not very nice and..." he shrugged. "It wasn't something too decent to do to Katerina, anyways."

Katerina, his on-again, off-again girlfriend that he was probably marrying, if the gossip rags in the _Prophet _were true. The Potter family were famous, and everything about them was famous. Lily hadn't read the _Prophet _in three months, though, and she wondered what had happened over this summer between the golden couple.

Well. Lily Evans was not quite a talkative person, but she wasn't often speechless, either. And this time, this particular frightening-life-threatening time, she was stunned beyond words. Stunned, she realized, probably beyond _movement. _Annoying James and his annoying arse-saving tactics and his annoyingly good skills. It bothered her--a lot--that he was the one who knew how to all sorts of things beyond her scope. It would bother anybody to know that James, resident lsacker extraordinaire, could beat them at their own game, whatever that game.

Lily stared blankly at James, whose eyebrows knitted together in worry. "Lily, you okay?" he asked her softly.

"I--I'm fine, James, thank you," she replied abruptly. "Your apology's accepted, James. Thanks for that. I--I guess I'll see you around."

With her heart pounding in her ears, Lily Evans exited the Prefects' compartment.


End file.
